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Elections in Russia. Armed men on horseback stopped bus full of observers & journalists in Tyva & shot out the tires. Electoral observers beaten up & inked in Petersburg & arrested in Penza, @golosinfo coordinator arrested in Moscow, students forced to vote for rector in Bryansk. 
The odd spectacle of Moscow elections today: Liberal disqualified candidates like @SobolLubov calling to vote for communists & Stalinists, & disqualified candidate Alexander Solovyov is calling on people to vote for the spoiler candidate Alexander Solovyov telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/0…
Russian elections high-speed chase: In one Petersburg district a whopping 15% voted from home, then the urn full of ballots was taken away in a black Land Cruiser. Observers chased it for an hour until another car came & cut them off
How Petersburg authorities plan to elect unpopular Putin-appointed acting governor Alexander Beglov: This girl said she was given this stack of ballots filled out for Beglov & told to stuff them in the urn at a certain polling place for payment of 3000RUB @mediazzzona @max_katz
I've seen a lot of tricks to get out the vote for an uncompetitive Russian election but this is the 1st time I've seen a belly dancer with a LIVE PEACOCK
.@IlyaYashin was barred from the city council election & jailed for 50 days to keep him away from the protests. He saw no other choice than to vote for the communists: "If we can get at least a nominally independent majority that will give us a chance to control budget spending"
A particularly blatant example of ballot stuffing in Kazan. A Just Russia & communist observers also found falsifications at several other polling places but in at least one case authorities refused to seal off the urn in question kommersant.ru/doc/4086998
Ballot stuffers are being especially obnoxious in Tatarstan today...or the observers there are really on their toes (probably both)
At least 9 people planning to picket for political prisoners outside city hall have been arrested before they even arrived, including journalist Ilya Azar & Pussy Riot's Maria Alyokhina. They were simply wearing shirts with political prisoners' faces mbk-news.appspot.com/news/v-moskve-…
Gosh, how do they get all those separate ballots folded up together like that inside the urn? It's like one of those model ships in a bottle. Must be magic m.facebook.com/story.php?stor…
All day we've been watching videos of people shamelessly stuffing ballots, but Russia's public chamber thinks the real problem is "foreign interference" in the elections by Google, where @navalny's "smart voting" campaign reportedly bought an ad tass.ru/politika/68602…
@navalny United Russia (in red) reportedly lost huge # of seats on Khabarovsk & Irkutsk city councils. Khabarovsk 1st city where another party controls governor, parliament & municipal councils. @navalny supporters claiming a win but probably it's LDPR governor's popularity @RusiaSeMueve
@navalny @RusiaSeMueve With ballots still being counted, Kremlin-backed candidates are reportedly losing in 4+ districts, including the incumbent city council head & the head of United Russia's Moscow branch. Barring fraud it's looking like a win for opposition's tactical voting telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/0…
@navalny @RusiaSeMueve .@meduzaproject map of Moscow city council results with the mayor's candidates in blue & opposition-backed candidates in red. The Kremlin kept a narrow majority but lost 13 seats in major victory for @navalny's tactical voting campaign. Last night's story: telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/0…
@navalny @RusiaSeMueve @meduzaproject In other Russian election news, Vitaly Kaloyev, who was convicted of murdering a Swiss air traffic controller after his wife & children were killed in a plane crash (see the Schwarzenegger movie Aftermath), has been elected to Vladikavkaz city council bbc.com/russian/live/n…
The result will put the Kremlin on edge ahead of the 2021 parliamentary elections, when the ruling party must retain a majority to ensure either reforms to keep Putin in office or a smooth transition of power as his presidential term limit comes to an end telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/0…
